Nature scenes, peculiarly English (7)
I believe the answer is:
essence
'nature' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'scenes peculiarly english' is the wordplay.
'peculiarly' indicates anagramming the letters.
'english' becomes 'e' (abbreviation).
'scenes' anagrammed gives 'essenc'.
'essenc'+'e'='ESSENCE'
(Other definitions for essence that I've seen before include "Characteristic nature" , "A thing's intrinsic nature" , "Nitty-gritty" , "Defining quality" , "Nature - concentrate" .)